Current Project: Pattern Analysis
Many Christians believe that the Bible is God-breathed based on 2 Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is inspired by God." That is, the Holy Spirit inspired each writer as they penned their individual book or books. They believe that by faith. I can show that. I suggest that the Holy Spirit has shown me, verse by verse, strong evidence that He did in fact inspire the entire Bible.
My pursuit for the last eight years has been an in-depth analysis of every verse of the Bible. The result is a methodology that I am calling Pattern Analysis. By using literary structural techniques, pattern analysis reveals consistency from Genesis to Revelation. These patterns reveal the Holy Spirit's unique and complex thought process.
Of the 31,100 verses of the Bible, I have analyzed 20,400 by sampling at least 25% of every book. Forty-six books have been analyzed in entirety, 65% of the Bible. So far, only nine verses do not obey the pattern analysis model — scholars have debated for many years whether those nine were part of the original manuscript.
A Methodology to Understand the Holy Spirit's Thought Process
What I believe I am seeing is a ... Show More model of the Holy Spirit's thought process as He inspired Matthew, Moses, Malachi, and all the other so-called authors. This model shows that for each type of pattern, He consistently placed the emphases in the same predictable locations. When I look at any portion of the scripture, once I determine the literary structure, I find the emphatic portions where I would expect them to be.This is similar to the signature of one's handwriting where certain letters are repeatedly formed in the same way. This consistency suggests that pattern analysis gives evidence of His unique thought process.
Therefore, one reason for pattern analysis's importance is to help the reader determine emphatic portions as given by God through the Holy Spirit. That in itself should be significant but there is more. Pattern analysis confronts a common conception that men created and/or edited the Bible.
For more than one-hundred years, scholars have debated about who is the narrator in the Bible. For example, Moses certainly was not there at the time of Creation. Was he the narrator or is chapter 1 of Genesis a story that was passed down from generation to generation? Or, did the One who hovered over the earth at the time of Creation, the Holy Spirit, somehow communicate the story to Moses? The importance of pattern analysis is that it strongly supports the thought that the human attributed to writing a portion of scripture is much less important than the One who inspired it.
Pattern analysis therefore presents the Bible as the Word of God, a personal word spoken to a writer and also to each one of us. It was not just written to an ancient time, it was written to you and me. We read and/or hear His message as the Holy Spirit emphasizes His thoughts to us in a personal way. I prepared a draft version of a book entitled Pattern Analysis Handbook in September 2017. That book teaches the basic pattern analysis methodology. Based on the feedback from others, I decided to extend my analysis to a larger portion of the Bible. Three years later, I am more than 60% complete with the Bible. The approach has been modified in a number of ways since 2017 and the manuscript needs revision. In addition, the explanations and examples in the Handbook need to be improved.
My current plan is to prepare another manuscript which I am calling Pattern Analysis Findings. That document is to be submitted to an scholarly academic audience for their review. It is to contain my findings to date. I started preparing that document in December 2018 but my wife passed away that same month. A year later I returned to the analysis effort with a focus on making the analyses more consistent. As of April 2021, I have completed a first draft of the entire New Testament. Once the Findings manuscript is completed, I am hoping that scholarly review will help polish this methodology.
In today's world
A seemingly large segment of society is either ignoring the Bible or they are accepting only those portions that seem right to them. Some of these people recognize there is a divine being but have not yet met their Savior. Others like the love and grace portions of the Bible but ignore large portions of the Old Testament. And many of our Jewish friends have not recognized that the One who inspired the Old Testament also inspired the New. Pattern Analysis presents the whole bible as the Word from God with the potential to contribute to an awakening of today's generation.You may email me at Tom@ThomasBClarke.com.